Art is Everywhere - How to Really Look at Things

Art is Everywhere - How to Really Look at Things

In 2005 there was as a street performance in Florence that featured a white canvas with a light grey sentence reading, "Art is Everywhere”, temporarily exhibited on the streets. The aim of the project was to create a temporary visual emptiness: a necessary condition for opening people’s eyes so that they could see the interesting layers of scratches, marks, old posters and parts of the city that normally remain unnoticed by many. Within a few years, it had become a 2 day workshop, where participants are invited to explore the city with new eyes, and were asked to complete small assignments and to document their findings with photographs. This book is the result of that experience, to forget the challenge of defining Art but understand it as a trigger for new and different interpretations of what already surrounds us. It is a meter on how we look at things, and whether we have the right tools or not to decode it.

Now more than ever art is strictly related to time. Since Art is everywhere you just have to be at the right place at the right time. But that is not enough. Not only, as Proust said, is it necessary to have new eyes to discover new things it is also indispensable that you are slowing down. See the details. Take the example of the art of Urs Fischer and his melting wax statues. Be it classical figures or realistic persons, everything is set on fire and melts slowly with time. A visitor will not see the same thing as the next one in minutes, one can only see the final horrible ending of a statue if it stays for the necessary time it takes to melt. It’s the perfect metaphor for interpretation of art. Where does Art belong? Where does it start and end? Through ingenious collages and montages, the author revolves our expectations regarding the experience of art. A book for young creative minds to get inspired, an instrument for developed artist to reconsider their workshop and the end of borders between what is framed and what is not.

Have you ever wondered why our senses become more alert when, say as tourists, we visit a city for the first time? And why it often seems that nothing extraordinary or exceptional ever happens along our daily routes? Is it possible to discover something wonderful and special without the necessity of visiting museums, monuments, or other places that differ from our habitual haunts? "Art is Everywhere” combines science, hands-on practices used in art workshops, and clear and simple language to answer these questions. And raise some others.